Science House Workshop

WWW Search Engines

Searching the internet for information is easy with online tools called search engines. Search engines can access multitudes of information 24 hours a day. To use a search engine just type in a keyword. The search engine uses these keywords to seek out the information that you are looking for in an Internet database. The search engine will return with a list of related Internet links in an ordered list. The closest matches to what you want will be located at the top of this list.

Tip: Each search engine may have hints for narrowing your search. For instance, if you type SCIENCE EDUCATION you may get back every page that contains science and every page that contains education. Typing "SCIENCE EDUCATION" or SCIENCE+EDUCATION may narrow it down to pages about science education.

AltaVista Search Network: AltaVista from Digital Equipment Corporation gives you access to the largest Web index on the Internet: "125 million pages found on 476,000 servers, and four million articles from 14,000 Usenet news groups." The Babelfish translation engine lives here!
Wired's HotBot: HotBot boasts an enormous index of over 110 million documents on the Web and offers customizable searches by media type, date, and location. This search engine is one of the fastest on the Internet. Click on More Search Options to set up a SuperSearch.
GoTo: GoTo is very fast, uncluttered search engine based on the original World Wide Web Worm. For extra search tips, click on About GoTo.
Ask Jeeves: Ask Jeeves allows the user to search the Web by asking questions in plain English. It has a knowledge database of answers to over 7 million questions, and it "grows smarter" as more people ask questions. Answers from several search engines are returned with each query. The site also contains Ask Jeeves for Kids, a safe search engine for kids age 7 to 14.
Google: Google search engine uses a page ranking technique to find web pages that have been linked from other web pages. The results quote the part of the web page that contains your search terms to help with choosing which pages to visit.
Northern Light: Northern Light uses precision relevancy ranking to return search results. It dynamically groups results into labeled custom folders. In addition, 6100 full-text journals, books, magazines, newswires, and reference sources are part of this web site.
Dogpile: Dogpile uses 25 search engines to search the web. Three engines at a time are used to return at least 10 hits for a query.
The Internet Sleuth: The Internet Sleuth maintains an index of searchable databases, most of which can be searched directly from The Sleuth, simplifying the search for information. The Internet Sleuth solves the problem of finding databases on the web by finding them for you, and allowing you to perform your search without leaving The Sleuth.
The Mining Company: Each Mining Co. GuideSite(TM) is devoted to a single topic - complete with site reviews, feature articles and discussion areas - and each site is created by a qualified Mining Co. Guide, a company-certified subject specialist who¼s responsible for helping you get the most out of your time online.
ProFusion: ProFusion from the University of Kansas combines up to nine search engines. Personalized searches are possible.
GO network: Infoseek search at GO Network allows searching without using Boolean terms. GO Network also provides a directory of web pages (GO Guides) which contain over 500,000 sites. Science is in Education/Fields of study.
Yahoo: Yahoo is a "topic-oriented" search engine of a large web resource database. It includes a small search engine to help you find things listed within it.
Yahooligans!: Yahooligans is a Web guide made specifically for kids. Contains many good educational resources for teachers and students.
Lycos: This search engine, begun at Carnegie Mellon University, will allow you to search document titles and content. Its index includes ftp and gopher information. Lycos SafetyNet protects children from unsuitable content.
Lycos Pictures and Sounds: A search engine for photos, art, designs, videos, music and noises which link directly to image and sound files on the Web.
Highway 61: Highway 61 from the Virtual Mirror is sponsored by Digiweb. This meta-search uses five search engines to return 35 - 125 hits depending on your preferences.
cnet's search.com: SEARCH.COM is a service of c|net. This search site allows you to search the entire Web or search within directories created by cnet. Science topics can be found under Learning.
Excite: This search engine does it all! In addition to searching the Web, this search engine can scan Usenet newsgroups, and has a NewsTracker which seeks out information from over 300 magazines and newspapers. Excite also has a searchable index of web-reviewed sites on the Internet. Excite also offers an e-mail look-up, a people finder, and an Internet yellow pages.
MIMS Hub Internet Database: MIMS Hub, Midlands Improving Math and Science, has a great science and math database. You will find over 500 annotated math and science resources on the web. The annotations are written by teachers for teachers. The math and science resources are divided into 18 categories. The database can either be searched by category or by a key word search.
Beaucoup! Reference/Language/Literature/Education/Schools: This web site links to a variety of search engines of educational resources that are useful for a K-12 educator.
All-in-One Search Page: This site is a compilation of various forms-based search engine tools found on the Internet. They have been combined here to provide a consistent interface and convenient ALL-IN-ONE search point.
Savvy Search: Savvy Search links to more than a dozen Internet search engines, including Alta Vista, Inktomi, Lycos, Yahoo, Excite, and more. All search engines are searched in real-time directly through this service. This makes it easy to use multiple search engines in the least amount of time. Enter your keywords, and Savvy Search sends them to all of the engines at the same time.
G.R.A.D.E.S.: Classroom Connect's Global Resources And Directory of Educational Sites, G.R.A.D.E.S., is a library of educational Internet links designed to provide focused searches specifically for K-12 educators.
WebCrawler: This engine searches by document title and content. It offers reviews of many sites on the Internet.
Magellan Internet Guide: Magellan allows you to search for your topics in a variety of ways. These include searching all sites on the Internet, Magellan's reviewed and rated Internet sites, or just Green Light sites. Green Light sites have been found to be free of "adult" material.
MetaCrawler: A multi-threaded search engine that combines results from Lycos, Webcrawler, InfoSeek,Yahoo, and Einet Galaxy.
Education World: Education World claims to be the "world's educational resource on the web." Their database contains over 50,000 urls any of which contain annotations. You can search by keyword or by selecting topic areas.